Africa Wild

No laws broken?

Richprins wrote: ↑Thu Nov 26, 2020 6:13 pm No laws broken?

RIch its not about laws being Broken ..Its about Ethics and doing the right thing

Asif Wattoo, an employee at Thames Water, said big-game hunting was “thrilling”

Trophy hunters unmasked as trolls target government over clampdown

BY DOMINIC KENNEDY - 7TH DECEMBER 2020 - THE TELEGRAPH

Two prolific British trophy hunters are unmasked today as a network of trolls targets Boris Johnson’s government for threatening to clamp down on big-game hunting.

Abigail Day, a Cambridge-educated lawyer, and Asif Wattoo, a Thames Water worker, have travelled to Africa to bag animals such as lion, elephant, leopard, rhino, buffalo and zebra.

Their identities were revealed as two “dark arts” campaigns were uncovered aimed at swaying a consultation by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on banning the import of body parts of endangered wild animals as trophies. The disclosures are made in a book by Eduardo Gonçalves, founder of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting. Lobbyists believe that Britain’s decision is imminent.



Ms Day, who graduated in 1987, founded the London chapter of Safari Club
International (SCI), the trophy hunting industry’s biggest lobby group. She won the club’s “Diana” title as the world’s top woman in the sport and now co-chairs the committee running the award. She has 200 prizes for killing game after hunting in 36 countries.

Ms Day declined to comment.

Mr Wattoo, from Berkshire, has posed for dozens of photographs with dead giraffe and described on social media a bullet coming out of the neck of an impala he had shot. “If you’ve hunted in Africa you know exactly how thrilling it is,” he wrote.

Mr Wattoo was contacted for comment by the Daily Star Sunday. Thames Water told the newspaper that it did not comment on what employees did outside work.

Separately, trophy hunters are shown to be behind claims that Britains’ opposition to hunting in Africa is a new form of western colonialism.

Online campaigning against the UK is being funded by SCI, according to Trophy Leaks: Top Hunters and Industry Secrets Revealed, the book by Mr Goncalves published today.

Supporters of trophy hunting argue that the sport helps conservation by encouraging local communities to preserve wildlife populations so they can attract overseas hunters for tourism revenue.

Mr Goncalves writes: “Safari Club International has been funding not one but two “dark arts” campaigns to convince Defra . . . into believing there is widespread opposition in Africa to government plans to ban troph imports.

“Safari Club International paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to a contractor to run a major campaign during [the Defra consultation]period which claimed ordinary Africans were aghast at the proposal. The contractors, who called themselves the Inclusive Conservation Group, used artificial intelligence technology to create dozens of fake social media profiles to promote the campaign’s key messages.”

One of the pro-hunting platforms was Let Africa Live, a now-banned Facebook page with 38,000 followers. The Times asked Inclusive Conservation Group (ICG) and SCI for comment.

The Let Africa Live campaign targeted Britain during a public consultation by Defra between November 2019 and February 2020 on proposals to ban trophy hunting imports. Social media was flooded with anti-imperialist messages purporting to come from Africans.

One post was headed: “The UK is trying to colonise local Africans by controlling how they use their land.” It stated: “The foreign influence of the animal rights extremists is only doing more harm to wildlife AND people!” The message urged readers: “If you have an example of the positive benefits . . . legal and well-regulated hunting has on people and wildlife, please send the story to the consultation email address.

Mr Goncalves writes: “The messages were then “liked” and “shared” en masse by fake social media accounts.?

Let Africa Live was banned from social media in October as Facebook and Twitter became worried about fake messages in the run-up to the US presidential election. Facebook said its investigation linked ICG to fake accounts focused on Kenya, Botswana and the US concerning topics from trophy hunting to praise of President Trump. Twitter suspended the network’s accounts that were celebrating South Africa’s policy of allowing trophy hunts.

A propaganda exercise has been launched by Blood Origins, a campaign run by an American hunter, which this year announced a partnership with SCI’s non-profit conservation wing.

Blood Origins has published videos in which stakeholders such as conservationists from Zimbabwe, Botswana and Tanzania are asked for views about Defra seeking to ban trophy-hunting imports. The questions are framed as Britain proposing to ban hunting because it believes it can manage African land better than Africans. The questioner asks: “Makes you angry, huh?”

Original article: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brit ... -kfqrq6bcq

UK to recognise animals as sentient and ban trophy imports

By Don Pinnock• 12 May 2021


(Photos: Unsplash / Jean Wimmerlin / Stephanie Harlacher / Simona Sergi / Mathew Schwartz / Geran de Klerk)

It’s a huge victory for animal welfare campaigners as the UK moves to halt cruelty to domestic and wild creatures.

The UK has tabled a raft of legislation to declare animals as sentient, halt most live exports, ban ivory and shark fin sales and import of wild trophies from endangered species.

In addition, people will be forbidden to keep primates as pets, to use wild animals in travelling circuses and to use farrowing crates for pigs, and cages for laying hens.

The government will also legislate to ban the advertising and offering for sale in the UK of unacceptable practices abroad such as canned lion hunting. It plans to crack down on puppy theft, which has boomed under Covid lockdowns, cruel glue traps as pest control, and to ban electric-shock dog training collars. It will legislate on animal welfare in the horse racing industry.

The government has commissioned research into the sentience of creatures such as octopus, squid, crayfish and lobsters. The various pieces of legislation, which will go before Parliament during its current session, have been built around the commitment to recognise in law the sentience of animals.

The Animal Welfare Act of 2006 accepted that animals can feel pain and suffering. According to a policy paper just released by the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs, “Now we have left the EU and the transition period has finished, we can go further. Explicitly recognising and enshrining animals as sentient beings in law will be at the very heart of central government decision-making going forward.”

The proposed legislation, recognising the 2019 Manifesto Commitment to ban the import of foreign hunting trophies from endangered animals, takes forward legislation “to ensure UK imports and exports of hunting trophies are not threatening the conservation status of species”.

The policy paper says the government will be implementing the Ivory Act this year to ban dealing in elephant ivory and plans to consult on extending the act to other species. Parliament will be tasked to implement proposals contained within the Animal Welfare (Sentience), Kept Animals, Animals Abroad and Environment bills as well as consolidating the Ivory Act, the Hunting Act and other non-legislative measures. DM

Are cows not also sentient?

They are NOT wild animals, they are food

They would disagree!

They do not have time to think, they are eating all the time

Lisbeth wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 6:10 pm

They are NOT wild animals, they are food

Aren't certain wild animals also food....... I'm sure they are

Sure, but cows are not wild animals.